


Forced Entry

by JohnAmendAll



Category: Sapphire and Steel
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-25
Updated: 2012-10-29
Packaged: 2017-11-17 01:12:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/545882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JohnAmendAll/pseuds/JohnAmendAll
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For two students, ghosthunting suddenly becomes very serious business.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

To the casual observer, there was little to distinguish the campus of Camelot University from its various forebears on Earth. The buildings, none older than two decades, looked as if they had occupied their places for centuries, the stone and brick artistically distressed to present a patina of age. The sounds and scents in the night air could have been matched in any city on the mother planet. An astronomer might have noticed some slight variation in the constellations above, but nothing of any great significance. To its staff and students, the foremost university on the world of New Albion was as close a homage to the mother planet as they could contrive — which was the way that most of them liked it. 

Those with a sensitivity to the weak spots and rough edges of Time could hardly be blamed for having a different view. 

The Student Union comhall was a large, neutral space, illuminated by functional lamp clusters hanging from its pre-formed plasteel roof. The walls were mainly bare brick, hung here and there with faded posters for student concerts or political causes from far back in humanity's history. A motley collection of tables and chairs, no two alike, lined the walls, as if left by a retreating tide. Of these, one table and two chairs had been pulled into the centre of the floor, serving as a temporary focal point for the room. 

Not for the first time that night, Rocky Crawford wondered what he was doing here. He was no stranger to late nights spent in the company of young women, but previously they had followed a straightforward pattern — and seances had very definitely not been included. He cast a glance at Dora, as she busied herself with her kit-built quantum imager. She was undoubtedly well up to his usual standard, her fashionable hooped skirt and low-cut lace blouse making the most of her considerable charms. But her tendency to put more priority on ghosthunting than, say, him, was beginning to make him think that there _were_ other girls in the world. 

"Here we go..." Dora muttered. "Oh." 

A fuzzy holographic sphere shimmered into existence above the imager, its contents reminiscent of a spillage in a paint factory during a multicoloured snowstorm. 

"Not what you were after?" Rocky asked. 

Dora manipulated various controls on the imager. The shape hovering above it grew, shrank, rotated, but failed to achieve any sort of coherence. 

"It's just background," she said. "Random noise." 

She turned to him for the first time. He was dressed as for an afternoon of football or rowing, his only concession to fashion being a tired-looking ruff round his neck. He was unquestionably a hunk, but his plain, forthright manner and lack of time for any subtlety were beginning to rub Dora up the wrong way. She found herself unable to avoid the thought that there _were_ other boys in the world. 

"That means there's no ghosts," he said. "Right?" 

"It means the machine can't see them." Dora gave the imager a last, defiant poke, then folded her arms. "I _know_ there's something here." 

Rocky sighed. "Maybe. But if you can't see them, there's not a lot you can do, is there?" 

"We'll just do it the old-fashioned way." Placing her fingertips on the table before her, Dora half-closed her eyes. "Is there anybody there?" 

Silence fell, in which the two ghosthunters could hear nothing but their own breathing and the occasional creak of the building around them. Silence lay on the comhall, possibly the whole University, as if it lay under layers of absorbent foam. They might have been the last two people in the world. 

Dora jumped at the distant sound of a bang. 

"Rocky! That was..." 

"Someone at the door." Rocky pushed his chair back and climbed to his feet. "Probably wants to know what we think we're doing here at this time of night." He set off for the main door, deciding that he half-shared those views himself. 

Before he could get to the door, it slid open, and two people walked into the room: a tall, broad-shouldered man with dark hair, accompanied by a meagre blonde. 

"Who are—" he began. 

"Names have power," the man replied, coldly. "They aren't to be shared casually. I'd ask why you're here, but" — he glanced from Rocky to Dora and back — "I can guess. Couldn't you find anywhere with a bed?" 

Dora jumped up, her face burning with anger. "You've no right to say that!" 

The man shrugged. "Unimportant. We're not your Morality Proctors, and as far as I'm concerned you can do what you like — anywhere else on this campus. Get out, both of you." 

"Make me," Dora retorted. 

Unhurriedly, the man advanced on her, reached out, and made to catch her by the arm. Rocky took a pace forward, and realised the other intruder, the woman, had her hand on his shoulder. As he tried to shake himself free, his legs buckled under him, and he found himself lying on the floor. The woman looked down at him and gently shook her head. 

Dora, meanwhile, had other concerns. The man was holding her wrist in a grip of steel, but he'd made no other move toward throwing her out. Instead, with his other hand he turned her to face him, took hold of her chin, and tilted her head until her face caught the light. 

"Why _did_ you come here?" he asked, softly. 

Dora clamped her mouth shut, and tried to stop her legs shaking. 

_Why did you come here?_ his voice repeated, though his lips did not move. 

Though Dora might have been able to stop herself talking, she couldn't stop herself thinking, and the memories jumped unbidden into her mind. At least, unbidden by her. Her knowledge, even as a child, that there were things she could sense that others couldn't. Her terror of the kitchen at her best friend's house, and the discovery, years later, that two centuries before it had been where an unhappy young woman had chosen to end her own life. Her family's decision to emigrate, and her relief that this new, young world had no such scars from the past... 

... until two weeks ago, in this very room, she'd felt the inexplicable gust of cold air against her cheek. 

_You're sure it wasn't a natural phenomenon?_

It had been in the middle of a folk dance, Dora couldn't help remembering. The room had been stifling, the overhead lamps blazing in all the colours of the rainbow. Her light dress had been damply clinging to her. And, then, suddenly— 

_Yes. I see._ She felt herself released, though the man's hard brown eyes remained on her. "I think it would be as well if you stayed." 

Dora tried to speak, and found, almost to her surprise, that she could. "And Rocky?" 

"If that's the name of your young man over there, he may stay too. As long as he doesn't get in the way of our assignment." 

"'Our' assignment?" Dora repeated. 

"My colleague and I have been assigned here for a particular purpose. Your abilities may be useful to us. Consider yourself seconded." He saw Dora open her mouth to speak, but carried on anyway. "Before you ask, you don't have a choice in the matter." 

Dora took a deep breath. "If you want me to work with you... can't you tell me who you are?" She forced herself to meet his gaze. "It would help if I had some way to refer to you. It doesn't have to be your real name." 

"Then let's say... Wolfram. My associate is Ms Selby." 

"I'm Dora, and this is Rocky." Dora debated whether to add a 'pleased to meet you', and decided against it. She could feel a number of emotions at the moment, but pleasure certainly wasn't one of them.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Dora is obliged to make herself useful.

By the clock on the end wall of the comhall — an elaborate electromechanical device whose face was partly transparent to expose its gleaming brass innards — Mr Wolfram and Ms Selby had been in the building for about twenty minutes. To Dora, it felt like most of a lifetime. 

The moment the two visitors had taken their attention off her, Dora had attempted to make her escape. She'd gestured to Rocky, and the two had tiptoed to the comhall's main entrance door. The automatic sensor registered, but the door itself made not the slightest movement. Pulling at the emergency handles was no more successful. It wasn't as if the doors were locked, either; even a locked door had a little play in it. These felt as if they'd been welded shut. 

"You're wasting your time," Wolfram had said, without even looking up. 

It was only once Dora had given up on the possibility of escape that she'd taken the time to study the new visitors in more detail. To her initial impression of the man, she'd not been able to add much: of who he was, and of the 'assignment' he was engaged on, she knew no more. At first glance he might have been mistaken for a tax inspector or safety official, but there was an air of quality about his muted grey clothes that no mere bureaucrat could have affected. Time and care had gone into constructing his appearance. 

Having finished her inspection of Wolfram, she turned her attention to his assistant. Previously, she'd hardly taken any notice of Ms Selby. Now that she did, she found there was precious little to take notice of. Apart from a shock of startlingly yellow hair, everything about her presented an impression of insignificance. Her build was meagre, her face thin and nondescript, her voice (on the rare occasions that she spoke) unremarkable. 

It didn't improve Dora's temper that the woman seemed to be hitting it off rather well with Rocky. 

"Are you sure you're feeling better?" she'd asked him, the moment he'd returned from the door. 

He'd turned on her exactly the same cheeky grin that had bewitched Dora at their first meeting. "I'm fine." 

"But you did faint, or nearly." 

"Must've got up too quickly. That's all." He'd moved his chair closer to hers. "So d'you have a first name?" 

Nauseated, Dora had turned away, to watch Wolfram as he paced the floor, seemingly lost in thought. Almost as if he'd noticed her scrutiny, he turned on his heel and crossed the open space to join her. 

"I'm going to perform an experiment," he said. "Come with me." 

Dora stood up, and followed him. She knew how little choice she had in the matter, but it was slightly better to take verbal orders rather than be physically dragged. The short journey left them standing side by side, one of the bare brick walls before them. 

"Touch that brick," he said. "Do you notice anything?" 

Dora shrugged, and did as she was bidden. "Not really," she replied. 

The man took her other hand, almost gently this time. "And now?" 

_A labourer on Old Earth, loading the latest batch into the kiln, leaving his thumbprint in the clay._ She blinked, trying to clear the sudden vision from her eyes. _A ruined farmhouse, with workmen reclaiming such materials as they could. The hold of a freighter plunging through hyperspace..._

She turned to face him, meeting the blue gaze of his eyes. But hadn't they been brown? She blinked, and took another look. Definitely brown. 

"Why did I see those things?" she asked. 

"You know your talents as well as I do. I... helped you develop them. That's all. Now try another one." 

Dora reached out to the next brick in the wall. Her hand, she realised, was shaking slightly, as if touching the wall might burn her. Her fingers made contact with the brick. 

_A robotic brickworks, scooping clay out of the ground on a bare, empty planet._

"Now this one... and this one... and this one. Thank you." Wolfram had sounded anything but pleased. His assistant, without being called, hurried to join him. Dora took a few hesitant steps away, found nobody seemed to be taking any notice of her, and crossed the room to where Rocky was sitting. 

"What did he want with you?" he asked. 

"He wanted me to touch bits of the wall," Dora said. "He made me touch bricks and I could see... well, some of their history, I suppose." 

She waited for his usual blanket dismissal of anything supernatural. 

"I suppose that makes sense," Rocky replied. "Anne was saying..." 

"Anne?" Dora glanced across at Ms Selby as she made her own examination of the area of wall Dora had touched. "What's she been telling you?" 

Rocky leaned forward. "It's like this. You can get weak spots in, I dunno, the space-time continuum or whatever. And sometimes, when that happens, things try to get in." 

"What sort of things?" 

"She didn't say, but they don't sound very nice. She reckons there might be one trying it on here. And she's here to make sure it doesn't get through. Her and the Wolfram guy. That's why we couldn't open the door. If they can't stop it getting in, at least they might be able to contain it." 

"They could have let us get out of the way first." 

"If they'd given you the chance to go, would you?" He put his hand on hers. "Normally you can't resist any of that occult stuff." 

Dora pulled her hand away. "You don't understand. This is something that's part of me and I wish you wouldn't call it 'occult stuff.'" She cast a quick glance at the two visitors, who were still conferring. "And yes, if I got the chance I'd get as far away from here as I could. There's something about that Mr. Wolfram. He frightens me." 

"I'll look after you. Anyway, Anne said she was sure we'd be a great help." 

"I wish I knew how. Or maybe I don't." Dora shivered, and wondered if she'd felt the ghostly breeze again, or just imagined it. "What's it all got to do with the bricks, anyway?" 

"She said something old and something new together help to make a weak point. I suppose it's like the Seebeck effect, sort of." 

"This isn't the time to start showing off." Dora looked at the wall. "Some of those bricks came from Old Earth, and some were made here to match. All of them touching each other..." 

"If these guys are right, it could rip time open like a cheesegrater." 

Dora shuddered. "I wish you hadn't said that."


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A weakness is discovered.

The clock's hands had crept around to twenty past four, Earth Standard Time. In less than an hour, New Albion's sun — originally designated Sigma Carinae by Earth astronomers, and known to the inhabitants of the planet as Lugh — would be gliding above the horizon. In the comhall, it felt as if that would never happen. Endless night seemed to be wrapped around the building. 

"How do you feel now?" Miss Selby asked, kneeling solicitously beside Dora's chair. 

Dora flexed her fingers, trying to ignore the pain and stiffness. She'd participated in several sessions with Wolfram, enough that the glimpses of the past were beginning to blur together in her mind. Every time, they'd investigated a patch of wall, chosen seemingly at random. Every time, she'd had the visions of the near and far past, had seen flashes of dozen of lives. And every time, the fatigue and pain had increased. Wolfram had driven her hard, only letting her go when she'd been on the point of collapse. 

"I... don't think I can try again, yet," she said. 

Miss Selby patted her on the shoulder. "Maybe in five minutes." 

"Maybe," Dora repeated dully. 

"You're sure this isn't doing her any harm?" Rocky asked. It wasn't the first time he'd asked the question, nor the first time it had sounded so perfunctory. He must know, as Dora did, that neither of them had any choice in the matter. Their fate lay entirely in the hands of the two visitors. 

"She'll be fine," Miss Selby said, no less perfunctorily. 

Dora shut her eyes, and let her hands rest on the table before her. If something from beyond time was trying to break through into the room, there wasn't any sign of it, not even the touch of cold air on her cheek. As long as things stayed that way, maybe she had a chance to get through this. Wolfram still scared her, but at least he was trying to keep the monsters out. 

Drowsily, Dora kept her eyes closed and listened. Rocky's breathing, the footsteps of the two visitors as they unhurriedly paced the room, the almost inaudible whispering in her ear— 

The _what?_

With a gasp, Dora opened her eyes and sat bolt upright. The comhall looked exactly as it had all night. The windows were dark, the doors remained sealed, and the clock still read twenty past four. Nothing had changed, save that voice, far too faint to hear, and a faint breeze touching the hair on the back of her neck. 

"Mr. Wolfram?" she called. 

"Yes?" He was at her side in an instant, the urgency plain to hear in his voice. "What is it?" 

"I can hear something. Somebody talking." 

He put his hands on her shoulders. She couldn't see his eyes, but she knew they were once again flaring blue. "Show me." 

Dora felt the familiar surge of power through her body. A moment later, she was lying on the floor, looking groggily up at the other three. She'd felt as if something had hit her, simultaneously, on the forehead and in the chest. Or rather— 

"What happened?" Rocky asked, helping her up. 

Dora shook her head. "I don't know. It was as if I was running in the dark, and I ran straight into a wall." 

"We must try to break through that wall," Wolfram said, gently but firmly conducting her back to her chair. "Prepare yourself." 

With her head still swimming, Dora tried to concentrate on something in her field of view. There was the clock — still showing twenty past four, its cogs no longer moving. That didn't seem right, somehow, but she couldn't put her finger on why. Closer, the globe of her quantum imager was still displaying the same meaningless, multicoloured blur of patterns, the only fixed point a tiny, dark spot near the centre. 

"Now," Wolfram said. 

As the power hit her, she realised just how much he'd been holding back until now. This time, it was as if she was being pressed against the wall she'd imagined, an irresistible force pressing against every square centimetre of her skin. 

In the distance, someone was screaming, and she realised it was her. 

*

Rocky, standing a little way away, saw Dora's back arch and her limbs stiffen, heard her scream. 

"Let her go!" he shouted. There was nothing perfunctory about the demand this time. He launched himself at Wolfram, who was gripping Dora by the shoulders, and found himself held by a weak grip that he was quite unable to break. 

"Don't interfere," Miss Selby whispered. "You may find this upsetting, but it cannot be avoided. Also, if you try anything, you're a dead man." 

Rocky tried to pull free, to no avail. 

"I could make you heave your guts out," she said. Rocky managed to turn his head to face her, and saw that her eyes were flickering with an amber light. "And that is _not_ a figure of speech." 

Dora's scream broke off, with a sound like a gurgle. 

"I... hear... you," she rasped, each word forced out through unwilling teeth and tongue and jaw. 

Rocky caught a movement in the corner of his eye, and looked towards it. Dark indigo was flooding into the display of the quantum imager, filling it like ink poured into a basin, blotting out the flickering, random patterns. 

"Stop!" Rocky heard the panic in Miss Selby's voice, felt her grip on his arm slacken. "They're using _her!_ Disengage!" 

If Wolfram had heard, he had no time to react. In less time than it takes to blink, he, Dora and the table had turned white. A wave of cold air rolled out across the room, leaving tiny ice crystals in Rocky's hair and on his clothes. 

With horrible slowness, the motionless figures of Wolfram and Dora tumbled over backwards. When they hit the ground, they shattered like glass, the exposed surfaces of each fragment instantly frosting over. 

Numbed, unable to believe what was happening, Rocky stared at what, moments before, had been Dora. Then he managed to drag his eyes from the sight, and look at the woman still holding his arm. Miss Selby was staring fixedly into space, her face looking sickly to the point of jaundice, her lips moving soundlessly. 

"Put down the human," a new voice said. "And step away slowly." 

Rocky turned back to the table and its accompanying horror. From the clouds of vapour now swirling around it, two figures emerged. For a moment, Rocky felt an overpowering sense of deja-vu; whoever the new arrivals were, the way they made their entrance reminded him overwhelmingly of when he'd seen Wolfram and Miss Selby arrive, endless hours before. 

The man came to a halt a few paces out of the cloudbank. His clothes were grey, paler than Wolfram's had been, and archaic in style. In one hand he held a small, flat wooden box; his other hand rested on its lid. His partner, a statuesque blonde wearing a similarly antique blue dress, stood beside him, rather than meekly following him as Miss Selby had deferred to Wolfram. 

"You were Arsenic, once," she said, with the air of a policewoman writing down an offender's details. "Tell me, do you think selling out was worth it?" 

Rocky realised that Miss Selby had let go and was backing away from the newcomers, her hands held out as if to fend them off. 

"Enough," the man said. Slowly, he turned his box toward her, as if to show her its contents, and pressed the latch. 

Miss Selby, fear and hatred stamped on her face, was enveloped by black shadow. It darkened until she was no more than a silhouette on the wall, then faded away. Nothing was left of her. 

"Well done," the woman said. "I think she really believed if she hadn't run for it you'd have sent her to the Triassic." 

The man smiled, humourlessly. "With a portable chess set, no less." He opened the box fully, exposing the tiny, carved chessmen standing in neat ranks. "Are there any more of them?" 

The woman glanced around, and seemed to register Rocky for the first time. "Hello," she said, brightly, holding out her hand to him. "I'm Sapphire." 

Automatically, Rocky shook her hand, and was rewarded with a dazzling smile and a flare of blue light from her eyes. She briefly locked eyes with her partner, then turned back to Rocky. 

"Perhaps you'd be good enough to tell us where we are?" she said. "And when?" 

*

"Let me see if I can put this in terms you'll understand," Sapphire said. "A long time ago, the two of us were trapped by creatures of the kind you encountered tonight — Transient Beings, as we call them. But when they were constructing their trap, they based it on something real: a café, in 1947. Some part of that café must have ended up here. Perhaps something as small as a screw or a nail in one of the tables. It allowed us to make contact with a suitable mind, when one presented itself." 

"You mean Dora." 

"I'm afraid so. We didn't mean to kill her, not that you'll find that any consolation. We only had one chance to deal with — I suppose I'd better go on calling him Wolfram, though he hadn't any right to that name." 

"So all that stuff about creatures outside time was just something they made up?" 

Sapphire shook her head. "It's true. Most of them are a lot less friendly than us, too." 

"And... what happens now?" Rocky looked down once more at the shattered fragments that had, earlier that evening, been Dora. "They'll arrest me for murdering her. Bound to." 

"Could you take it back?" Sapphire's partner asked her, quietly but clearly. 

"No. Without her death we wouldn't be here. I daren't risk altering it." She turned back to Rocky. "I can't bring Dora back. But I can give you an alibi for her death. I'll send you back to before you met up with her this evening. Go somewhere else. Make sure you're seen. Stay in someone else's company until her body's found. Do you follow me?" 

Rocky nodded, his face pale. 

"Close your eyes." 

Rocky closed them. Sapphire placed one hand on each of his temples, then brought them together. As she did so, he vanished from sight, leaving only the two Elements in the hall. 

"And now you've wasted our time running round after him," Steel said, "what about the girl? She wasn't supposed to die here or now. Time isn't going to like that." 

"Then it can take it up with the Transients." Sapphire knelt down beside the shattered remains of one of Dora's legs, and rested her hand on the flash-frozen limb. "We may have to do some minor repairs, but I don't think her death will do too much damage to established history." 

"Talking of which, we should be on our way." 

"You're worried that history might need a bit of tender loving care after a few hundred years without us?" Sapphire shot him a smile. "You may have a point. Shall we go?" 

They faded gently away, as Lugh's first rays, shining through the comhall windows, caressed Dora's body.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's probably a rule that everyone has to write their own Assignment 6 fixit at some point. This one's mine.


End file.
